Kelly McParland: Maple Leaf soap opera returns for a new season

The Days of Our Leafs

Like every other Torontonian, I have been immersed all week in the one issue that has most dominated public interest: the future of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Canadians perplexed at the unfathomable loyalty the city shows to its favourite losing team fail to appreciate the underlying nature of the relationship: Leaf fans are addicted to the soap opera, which combines the cynicism and back-biting of Dallas with the straight-faced absurdity of 30 Rock. This week they returned for a new season, with a special two-hour episode in which Jack Donaghy is ousted as head of the network and replaced by an obviously upset Hornberger.

This year’s debut was a bit late in coming, thanks to Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr, the quarrelling producers, who were locked in a Titanic struggle over the division of revenues. When you have a hit like this on your hands, you want to milk it for all you can get, i.e. by closing it down for four months. No biggie, the Leafs are used to hanging around with nothing to do, sometimes even in the middle of a game.

Even though the team has been inactive for nine months, long enough to bring a new Leaf fan into the world, they waited until this week to fire Brian Burke. This, to put it mildly, upset the local sporting press, which has been wishing Burke would get fired for quite some time, but can nonetheless get indignant when management unexpectedly grants its wish. The main bone of contention is … well, actually there are two. One: It’s disruptive to fire the general manager a few days before camp opens, especially a shortened camp leading to a shortened season. Two: What the hell were they waiting for? It’s just weird to do nothing for nine months, then suddenly fire the guy who runs the team without a whiff of warning.

Under extensive questioning, Leaf president Tom Anselmi more or less acknowledged that Burke was ousted because someone in the new ownership didn’t like him. Anselmi didn’t put it that bluntly, but it was there between the lines. He wasn’t fired because of his poor record (no playoffs, no goaltender, no first-line centre, no power play, no prospect of serious improvement), or because he reportedly refuses to make a trade for Roberto Luongo, or because of mysterious, ill-defined allusions to his “private life”, which seemed to infer that he had some marital issues, as if that’s unusual. It was because of “leadership”. “It was more about leadership style, and fit … At the end of the day it was looking for a different voice and a different leadership approach.”

This was quickly deciphered to mean George Cope, CEO of Bell Canada, didn’t like him. His dislike stemmed from the fact Burke is, by pretty much unanimous agreement among the reporters who spent their days putting up with him, really hard to take at times. Loud, cocky, pugnacious, profane, insulting, not just ready for a fight, but often in search of one. You can take a smart-ass if he’s winning, but a losing smart-ass is the definition of redundant.

Still, dumping Burke at such an unusual time was deemed to be more evidence of chronic bad judgement at the top of the Leaf food chain. That wasn’t contradicted by the look on the face of his appointed replacement, Dave Nonis, a close friend of Burke’s who spent the press conference at which he was introduced staring vacantly into the middle distance like he was trying to figure what he had done to offend the gods so badly. You could tell he didn’t want the job — not like this, anyway — and didn’t have the deceptiveness to pretend otherwise. Anselmi was kind of vague about the reason for the timing, except to say it had been a topic of high-level discussion for some time.

This is one area into which I suspect the Leaf Death Watch is reading too much. When they missed the playoffs last spring the Leafs were in the process of being sold. An owner handing over its team doesn’t fire the boss and appoint someone new. That’s the prerogative of the new owner, who wouldn’t want to get stuck with someone else’s choice as chief executive (just as Nonis is now saddled with Burke’s choice of coach, and as Burke was saddled with Ron Wilson before that).

Though the sale was announced a year ago, it wasn’t finalized until late in August. We’re talking a big company here, $1.32 billion worth of hockey, basketball, soccer, real estate, television and other holdings. You don’t march in on Day One of an acquisition that size and start spitting out decisions on who runs what. It doesn’t seem all that unreasonable to me that the new owners would need a couple of months to sort things out. (They can’t even cancel a phone contract without three years notice, for cripe sake). And until two weeks ago there seemed no particular hurry, because it was at least even odds there wouldn’t be a season, thanks to the lockout.

Another area in which I have my doubts, as a long-term pathetic Leaf fan, relates to the wisdom of the move. One overwrought writer, for an organization that does not sign my cheques, decried it as the end of any hope of a Leaf rebirth. Burke hadn’t been given long enough. It would upset the players. It was a Bush league decision. “This city has no patience to wait and let one person take his time building a winner, and ownership has become reflective of that knee-jerk impatience,” he said.

Wait a minute. No patience? The fans who fill the Air Canada Centre game after game, as they have done for 45 years since the last Cup triumph, who pay astounding prices and buy team paraphernalia by the truckload despite the league’s longest playoff drought? Um, I spy with my little eye, one humongous hole in the logic there. A second hole is in the idea that Burke’s plan hasn’t been given enough time. Maybe Burke is gone, but his plan clearly remains. Nonis, we’re told, already ran the team on a day-to-day basis. He was in on all major decisions. He agreed with most of them. The two men were close, yin and yang, the main difference (as Nonis acknowledged) being that the new GM is a bit more patient and doesn’t make a habit of blowing his stack. He plans no radical changes, no rebuild, no clearing of the decks. (If I was him I’d hire my own coach now and get it over with, but that’s another issue). He might also be more pleasant to the writers.

So, basically, the Leafs fired Burke and kept his plan, in the hands of somebody who’s easier to deal with. Burkeism without the Burke. The timing may have been a bit strange, but not as entirely nuts as it’s been presented. These owners have a lot more at stake than the old owners, a pension plan with a long horizon. If the pressure to win has just been ratcheted up a bit, so there will be some playoffs to fill all those cable stations, I can live with that.